Free credit reports now available for Oklahomans

Wednesday was the first day that Oklahomans can request their free credit report under the new Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act or "FACTA". <br/><br/>You can get one per year from each of the

Tuesday, May 31st 2005, 6:39 am

By: News On 6

Wednesday was the first day that Oklahomans can request their free credit report under the new Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act or "FACTA".

You can get one per year from each of the three major credit agencies. They're all accessed from a central web site and they're much easier to read nowadays.

As News on 6 reporter Steve Berg tells us, if he can figure it out, anyone can.

All 3 credit bureaus are now on the same page, literally, the same "web"-page anyway, at www.annualcreditreport.com. And the reports themselves are more neatly organized than they were in the past.

I printed out my own credit report and took it to Margo Mitchell at Consumer Credit Counseling Service. "It's much simpler to read nowadays, it's more user friendly than it was two to three years ago."

She says the 3 agencies reports, while not identical, are much more similar to each other than they were in the past, so they're easier to compare and have scrapped a lot of the gibberish. For example, with the old credit report, there were confusing abbreviations and symbols. â€˜Râ€™ meant Revolving Account and â€˜1â€™ designated "Pays as Agreed". With the new credit report, they simply spell everything out. She says it's much easier to tell who the creditor is, which can come in handy in spotting inaccuracies. "Let's say there's a credit card from creditor ABC on here and you've never had a card with them, that's a good warning sign that you need to get in touch with them. There may be the possibility of credit identity theft going on."

Luckily, I recognized every creditor on my report, although a few were unpleasant memories.

You can get all 3 reports at once, if you're interested in comparing. Or you could stagger them out over a year, if you're more concerned about seeing changes in activity.

Just remember that once you access one, you won't get another free one for 12 months.

That web site again is www.annualcreditreport.com.